You do not have to be so small,

Pulling yourself down to fill the spaces they create for you.

Take up your space,

And if they look away

Let them.

Land of Death

We wake to another shooting,
Another man dripping with violence,
Children, dead, in their classrooms,

Mothers wail in the street,

For their own flesh,

Walking embodiment of part of their soul

torn away.

But this is America.

Land of the free and the brave.

Land of gluttony gurgling out of every pore.

Land of hatred seething forth.

Land of death.

We will not recover,

All these children we have lost.

The land that bears their blood.

While men with the same violence sit

In power, overflowing with greed.

Unwilling to offer more,

Than a thought.

 Too much.

always.

Too much.

                For the men who are filled

with empty voids.

        With a lack of desire for me,

even though I reach toward them.

Giving,

too much giving.

Why am I always giving?

There's that look.

        Is that all it takes now?

Too keep me here,

Hoping?

                        I listen too well

                                To all the things you have told me.

                                        And I know you long for obsession,

                                 For something that fills.

And for some reason,

it's not me.

I can't fill it.

Even with all my words,

And kindness,

And gifts.

I'm here,

Waiting.

Incredible,

Radiant,

Talented,

Strong,

and still,

Not enough.

Annalise

 "I never saw you as nothing. You were never trash in my eyes!"

Remember Me

There lingers the suffocation.

A feeling that everyone

Is better off

Without me.

Around.

If I drifted

Away into the air, things would be lighter,

Easier

For everyone else.

I see it.

A fading that happens in their minds

As I try to breathe myself back into life.

But I am unable

Mouth filled with cloth.

Choking.

Remember me,

Remember me.

Remember me!

I plead.

But all they remember

are the haunting screams.

That followed me.

And they decide instead,

To forget.

Blood Filled with Sadness

 

You asked me once if I missed being her.

I said no,

Because she was sick,

And sad,

So much of the time.

I sometimes forget that my sadness is older than I allow it to seem.

There has always been a vein of it,

Coursing within me.

For as long as I can remember. 

This girl,

Who should have been so happy.

Newly married,

With a loving husband,

Was filled to the brim with sadness. 

It's not just her. 

The me before her was equally sad,

And the one before that.

Sometimes I think the one before her was fine,

but then I remember,

Those 3am nights.

All of the darkness.

I remember

How hard she tried.

While her body betrayed her,

Sicker all the time. 

And still she fought to be happy.

But the sadness has filled her blood 

for as long as my heart has been beating.

Dreaming

Dreaming,

He died.

A crash so instant,

nothing was felt.

Except in me,

where everything is felt. 

A whirlwind of loss;

Wake up screaming.

Alive.

Concussed Stream of Consciousness

 Oct. 2020

I've been concussed now for about 10 days. My brain feels like the tide coming in and slowly going out as I forget what I remembered only a few moments ago. 

I don't know if I will ever be quite the same as I was before. The documentary told me that the only things that called people users were drug dealers and social media companies, so maybe I've just become a user to everything around me and now I'm finally feeling like I'm a little bit free. The addiction that wants me is overwhelming at times. Not of substances, but instead of this constant need for connection both personal and impersonal. To know that the world is as I think it is. To have enough knowledge to appear smarter than those around me. To believe the things I believe. To know there is purpose and meaning when it feels like there might not be any, anywhere, ever.

Maybe I will go back to normal in a week. I won't remember these things or feel these things, but right now I do. And right now I know that time does not go in a line and it does not work in the way that we imagine it to work. But instead, time connects us and circles and loops as we struggle to break free of our constant depression and self-loathing and we hope that there is more that we can be. More connection than we dreamed possible for ourselves. But is this reality, or is the concussion talking again? Pulling me back into the peaceful darkness.

Unsaid

"Cause if I don’t call you up
Then I don’t have to feel down
And if I don’t say I miss you
Then you never have to be around
If I don’t say I love you
Then you don’t have to love me
See how simple
The unsaid keeps things?"

-unsaid (Tomberlin)

Don't ask me how I am.

In this silence

And longing.

You already know how I am.

I am without you.

And without you feels emptier

By the day.

Enough

I've become increasingly exhausted 

by never being enough.

So today I woke,

and decided,

I am.

A Stage Full of Memories

I stood on the stage,

My stage,

The one where I have performed since I was a child. Standing in the lights that have always lit my face, looking to the dark wings where I used to whisper as I waited to go on. This wood that knows my touch, my voice, my songs, my secrets. 

This stage that will soon be torn down,

Emptied out. 

Turned into something new.

"I'm not ready,"

I said to the curtains and the seats that bang back and forth.

They only sighed in reply,

Weary with age.

How is it that I am never ready?

As if these memories would dissolve

As the building falls to the ground.

If this structure is gone,

Do all of those moments still matter?

 

All the Noise Inside My Head

I went somewhere in my head and you couldn't follow.

I tried to let you in with words and more words. But the more I said, the more it all came out wrong and small. I could feel your callousness toward me growing with every line. But the noise inside my head was too great, a cacophony, to show you what I meant. And all I really needed was for you to tell me I was not a game to you. That I still meant as much to you as I did on that Monday. That I was not foolish for trusting. 

But I could not ask for what I wanted. And you could not follow me through the noise. So instead I felt you pulling back, retreating. Away from me. Away from us.

Now the noise has settled. And I'm standing in the aftermath, shaking, unsure. Are you still here with me in the silence and serene? Or did the clanging send you running?

Keys

I gave you my keys. The ones I had kept
Untouched for years, for fear of judgement.
And you tossed them in a drawer
Almost immediately.
And forgot.

Secondhand Smoke

He tasted of cigarettes.

Not something I liked but something that permeated.
And now he is still there
In my mouth,
With every inhale of secondhand smoke.
Even after all these years.